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BOSTON, Massachusetts: Paul Pierce scored 41 points as the Boston
Celtics held off LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers 97-92
Sunday to advance in the National Basketball Association playoffs.
The Celtics have yet to win a game on the road
in the playoffs, but they remained perfect at home as they wrapped
up the Eastern Conference second-round series in a do-or-die Game 7.
They will face the Detroit Pistons in the
Eastern Conference finals for a spot in the championship series.
Top-seeded Boston had to overcome a superb
45-point performance by “King” James, the fourth-most in a Game
7 in NBA history.
It was the second straight series that the
16-time NBA champion Celtics were taken to seven games. They were
also stretched to the limit by the eighth-seeded Atlanta Hawks in
the previous round.
Boston will host Detroit in Game 1 of the
Eastern Conference finals on Tuesday.
“We’ve played 14 hard games,” said
Boston’s Kevin Garnett. “It’s more emotionally draining than
anything. We will enjoy this, but we know as we advance it will get
even more difficult.”
Pierce, the Celtics’ longest-tenured player in
his 10th season with the club, dueled James, whose Cavaliers reached
last year’s NBA Finals but were swept by San Antonio.
Pierce was largely responsible for preventing
any Cavalier comeback. He finished 13 of 23 from the floor and hit
4-of-6 triples.
“Tonight was basically get the ball to Paul
Pierce and get the hell out of the way. That’s exactly what it
was,” Garnett said.
Pierce said his stellar performance felt
natural.
“I thought we just did things that were in the
flow of the offense,” he said. “I don’t think I forced too
much.
“It was my aggressiveness that led to the open
shots I was able to take. I took a number of 15-footers that I know
I can make right there off the dribble.
“The ball was coming to me. I felt great. I
was just letting it ride.”
James, however, kept the Cavaliers in it until
the bitter end, as he and Pierce put on a show that drew comparisons
to the duel between Celtics icon Larry Bird and Atlanta’s
Dominique Wilkins in Boston’s Game 7 home victory in the same
round in 1988.
“Fans came to see Paul Pierce and LeBron James
play—I told him that,” James said of his brief mid-game chat
with Pierce. “I said they came to see us play, let’s give the
fans something to remember.
“It was very exciting to be a part of this,
especially in this building. As a fan of basketball, and I know so
much about the history—this will go down in history.”
James, who scored 112 points in the final three
games of the series, sandwiched 3-pointers around a basket by Pierce
to pull Cleveland within 83-80 with 5:42 to play.
The Cavaliers, who never led, got within 89-88
on a steal and dunk by James with 2:20 left—but didn’t score
again for more than two minutes.
While Pierce was the undisputed star, the
Celtics had a key contribution from an unlikely source as P.J. Brown
responded to Cleveland’s late surge.
Brown, who was in retirement before Boston
signed him after the trade deadline, drained an 18-footer with 1:21
to play, then forced an air ball by James with 25 seconds left.
“PJ has been what we thought he would be,”
Garnett said. “He’s brought not only energy but veteran
leadership. He’s been there, he’s very poised. I felt like his
shot was very important, if not the biggest shot of the game.”
-- AFP
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